tickling_your_brain 2 1/2 wise cracks A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why. The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards. The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic." Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means, "the king is dead". Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head." Camel's milk does not curdle. An animal epidemic is called an epizootic. Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants. The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used. Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan. All porcupines float in water. Cat's urine glows under a blacklight. If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases. Non-dairy creamer is flammable. The airplane Buddy Holly died in was called "American Pie", thus the name of the Don McLean song. The only nation whose name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan. When opossums are playing 'possum', they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building. If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural. Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. Ben and Jerry's sends the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's maiden name was Betty Jean McBricker. The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 hildren. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors. The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life." The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb. "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex. Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy. A group of unicorns is called a blessing. Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink." A group of frogs is called an army. A group of rhinos is called a crash. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. A group of whales is called a pod. A group of ravens is called a murder. A group of officers is called a mess. A group of larks is called an exaltation. A group of owls is called a parliament. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie. The phrase "sleep tight" derives from the fact that early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across the bedframe. A tight sleep was a comfortable sleep. The term "three dog night"(attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs(dingos, actually) to keep from freezing. Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their radio's newscast about the wreck. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since. It floats in gasoline as well as water. Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself. The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside, they would crack and break off, thus the saying. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself. The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows." 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321 If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired." Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village." 010209 ... User24 well, that passed about 8 minutes. 030629 what's it to you? who go blather from